Hello Reader,

Jersey City Added to Learning Adventures Workshop Tour

Registration is now open for a 5th Learning Adventures workshop, January 9th 2006 in Jersey City, NJ. These workshops, focused on creative curriculum design to support project-based learning across the curriculum, are all open to the public. Space still remains for Boston, Chester County (PA), Pittsburgh, and Chicago in November, but don't wait too long! Learn more and register at:https://learning.constructingmodernknowledge.com​

What’s on Your Mind? Time for Conversation and Community

It occurred to us that we haven’t hosted an online conversation in a while. These times deserve opportunities to chat, listen, and think with like-minded educators. So, click on this invitation to sign-up for our Ask Me Anything conversation on September 30th.

What's on Gary's Mind?

• ​"This isn’t About Cheating, but a Loss of Dominance" - a new article I wrote about AI hysteria and what good teaching might look like going forward.
• The unrealized potential of the maker movement in education – Foreword to the forthcoming Lithuanian edition of Invent To Learn​
• Rhetoric around the “science of learning,” “science of reading,” and the rise of explicit direct instruction is a form of pedagogical authoritarianism making schools not only joyless and less effective, but a threat to democracy.
• The antidote to the “science of learning” is reinvesting in the “art of teaching.”
• ​The Best School in the World (my favorite school)
• Making project-based learning richer – a discussion I’ve been having on LinkedIn. One might think of this as neoliberalism vs. project-based learning.
• My most recent published conference paper is a rumination on the state of progressive education movements and leadership – Papert, Parables, and the Future of Constructionism.
• The important distinction between digital and computational​
• The last thing we should be teaching is entrepreneurship.

Agree? Curious? Disagree? Got your own list? — Sign up for the conversation on Sept 30!​

Back-to-School Book Recommendations for Teachers

We would like to recommend two books for new and returning teachers beginning another school year. While neither book seems an obvious choice for K-12 educators, applying preschool and higher education perspectives to K-12 praxis requires the level of personalization, creativity, and introspection that we desire in students.

• ​Choice Time: How to Deepen Learning Through Inquiry and Play, PreK-2 is about how teachers can carefully design centers that scaffold children’s natural instinct for play.
• ​How to Teach College: Inspiring Diverse Students in Challenging Times by our late friend James Loewen, is ostensibly about higher education, but is full of widely applicable teaching strategies designed to inspire students to stay curious, vigilant, and engaged.

They both offer practical advice and pedagogical techniques that make classrooms more learner-centered. These are essential additions to any professional library.

Sylvia Martinez & Gary Stager